Hastings DirectReviews 56

This is my first time using Hastings Direct and won't ever use them again. I went through Hastings direct insurance to get a new windscreen on my car as mine had chipped, they made me use National Windscreens, National Windscreens then caused over £100 worth of damage to my car whilst trying to fit the new windscreen! I was then told to pay out of pocket for the damages and that National Windscreens would pay me back, when given a number of who to call once i had paid for the work to be done to fix my car, i couldn't get through to them at all, so went through Hastings to see if they could help as they were the ones who made me use them. Was then told it's nothing to do with them and that they would not help me, to which i asked to put a complaint in, they then told me that's fine and ended the phone, later received a call asking me why i put this compliment in, was then spoken to by the most rude women on the phone who insisted that National Windscreens have paid me back (they still haven't) and then told me they wouldn't be able to speak to me on the phone and i would have to communicate through email (to which they never respond on). Staff are beyond rude and unhelpful. Wouldn't recommend to anyone, save your money and go else where

They mf put family on my name and didn't knew they hindu mf staff or costoumer service they had what i been told even some 1 had a good time with us we put claim on you time to get money back which u took from indian that's i been told

Unfortunately we havent had a great experience with Hastings.

We took out the insurance 5 days ago for my 18 year old daughter.

On Monday, she dropped back some library books to her college in Islington and picked up a couple of friends to go shopping in Westfield shopping centre white city. There was a lot of traffic and her friends were using her phone to add to playlists on spotify.

The next day, she opened the app and it was reporting 2 things:
- 1 excessive phone use whilst driving (although she personally never touched her phone once)
- 2 excessive cornering. This was being reported as she was driving down the exit ramp from the 6th floor on the car park. She had no choice but to come down in a spiral, there was no otherway to drive to but to do constant cornering.

We called Hastings as her driving score had dropped to 56% and we were obviously concerned and got through to someone I shall call Mr K.

I queried with Mr K how the app works, was it using the internal gyroscope in the phone, he said it was. I said what if the phone drops out of the holder is that recorded as use? He said it would.

I asked what if my daughter pulled over and set a new sat nav journey and then drove off, how can it differentiate between this action and messing with the phone in traffic? He said it doesnt and it would be classed as using it whilst driving.

I asked if we could therefore just get a second phone to connect the blackbox to as she doesnt use the phone whilst driving and it would prevent these issues, he said that it was against the rules. I said that I had actually asked Katie on live chat about that and she said we coud. He said you cant. I said can you just show me where in the policy it says you cant, and he said that it couldnt off the top of his head, but its not allowed.

I said overall it was outrageous but that we would just get a second phone to connect to spotify so at least her friends can choose music and that interaction wouldnt be recorded. We came off the call.

Within about 10 minutes we had a notification in the app stating that our insurance was cancelled. We immediately called Mr K back and asked him what was going on. He said that have tried to maniupulate the data. I said we have done no such thing, we asked questions, I queried that we had been told otherwise by Katie and that it was not in the policy but at the end of the call we agreed to just get another phone for spotify. He said that would be allowed but its too late now as telematics have cancelled it based off what he had reported to him. He said that we told him multiple times that we would get another phone for the app.

I retirated to him that I had not said that but queried getting another phone, as we had been told we could. And that at the end of the call we said we'd just do it for spoitfy. He said well you told me otherwise mutliple times, and I said yes but at the end that was the compromise that we were going with.

I asked to speak to a manager, he said no one was available. I asked to speak to the telematics team, he said theyre not customer facing. I asked to raise a complaint which he said he had done and I have a raised a separate one on the website.

Overall however our insurance has been cancelled for not ACTUALLY doing anything wrong, just asking and being honest and open about what was and wasnt allowed under the policy. Mr K for some reason took it upon himself to report only part of our conversation but not the end part, which was that we would just ensure that my daughters friends used a different phone for the music.

Overall I have found this service to be really poor. Mr K needs training and to listen and help. His actions actually felt malicious.

I do not believe it is lawful or within any policies that you can cancel a policy based on Mr K THINKING we might do something that we asked about being possible.

How can this be right? I bet there are loads of people just getting a second phone and attaching the app to that from the outset that you dont even know about. At least we were honest and asked the question!

My daughter had a policy 3 months ago, all of sudden they ask 3 months later (after they have taken full payment for the year) for additional information.
So this is what they asked,
Job title and no claims.
We submitted 2 years no claims, we actually had 3, so they said they would return £37. They insisted we added the wrong job title, my daughter has always worked in admin, they say on the document she was sales assistant, don't believe them but ok.
So they offer a refund of £37 but charge us £100 for job title name but take £137 out of my daughter's account. I have reported this and intend to take it as far as possible.
However beware, Hastings are quite an inept company who are more than happy to take unauthorized funds from your account.
Never again.

They made claim on my name which i didn't know hope they died like jew and neve find a grave to buried a white d paid to and other white d for nothing i have posted the pic of car which was damage what a mf piece of s*** they are

Terrible service from Hastings after making a claim on my car insurance.

Everything that could go wrong, went wrong, due to Hastings' terrible and non-existent communication with me. Do not use Hastings Direct as your car insurer, as they will be useless when you need them the most.

Straight after my car accident, I was on hold for over an hour trying to speak to someone and request roadside recovery. Eventually, I got through and was told the RAC wouldn't be able to complete a roadside recovery for another 5 HOURS…in the meantime I was stranded in the middle of a very busy road until the police came to recover me and my vehicle.

After the accident, I was never clear on where I was in the process of my claim, and every time I phoned up, I had to re-explain everything to them, as if none of my claim history was in their system.
They seemed to be doing nothing to move my claim forward, even after I was informed the recovery yard which had my car was going to destroy it if Hastings did not collect it after 14 days.

After my 7th call with Hastings, it turned out they didn't even have the correct location of the recovery yard my car was taken to. Even though I had told them multiple times over the phone AND in SEVERAL emails.

I was not given a courtesy car after requesting it, which is included in my policy. I had to phone 3 separate times until they hired a courtesy car through Enterprise, but then cancelled the car hire after only a few days. When I phoned Hastings to find out why, they had no record of hiring a car for me in the first place! Once they found the record of this, they extended the hire which was great of them…but then cancelled it a few days later again, once my car had been deemed a write off – according to their "policy", once your car is written off, they take away the hire car. So I was stuck with no car and no payout from Hastings to buy another one.

Customers have the right to know that you will not be dealing with Hastings for the most part – they will outsource EVERYTHING to Vizion Network…look up their reviews and see for yourself how terrible they are. But Hastings simply do not care about the service offered with this "trusted partner" of theirs.

I was told someone would be in touch within 2 working days to tell me my car's valuation for the payout – someone did phone me…but to tell me because the car had a personalised plate, they couldn't value it themselves and it would have to be sent to engineers to value it. So apparently for the 20+ days my claim was ongoing, NOBODY thought the personalised plate might be an issue. So I was having to wait another WEEK to hear their valuation.

The whole experience felt like this was Hastings Direct's first time dealing with a claim, and no one had any idea what to do. Their internal communication was non-existent, their communication to me was non-existent.

I had to be the one manging the whole thing and moving everything forward as they had zero communication or updates.

I felt like I had to explain to Hastings the amount of stress this was causing me just to get an update on my claim. Everyone I spoke to was very robotic, and just repeating the same thing to me, giving me no updates at all, and transferring me from department to department.

Do not use Hastings Direct as your car insurer, as they will be useless when you need them the most.

Very unprofessional, aggressive, I do not recommend. Really bad experience, I will never use them again.

Set up a new insurance policy and then changed my mind and cancelled it a few hours later as I decided to stay with my current provider.

I was told in the phone by Hastings Direct that they would refund my payment in 5 working days.

I've now received a letter saying that they are actually not going to do that and instead will hold the money for about 3 weeks till the policy was supposed to start and then send the money 5 days after that.

Totally unhelpful on the phone.

Avoid these bunch of crooks!

Appalling company. Cancelled insurance without notice because THEIR App does not work, and they refused to send another tab. Do not use this insurer.

Cancelled my insurance because my passenger was using google maps avoid people dont be sucked in to there rubbish had 2 policys in the last month gad alot of money from me had me over bigtime took advantage of a vulnerable person dont use them there horrible people should no longer be a insurance broker lowest of the lowest avoid

Poor communication. And that's the best things about them…Avoid at all costs and go with a proper company

So my BMW had its catalytic converter stolen from it, Hastings arranged for the RAC to collect it! Between the companies that had it I received it back fixed, but the body work damage which wasn't there when collected!
Hastings will not get this sorted despite it being under their care! It's been ongoing and unresolved their customer service is awful! Please stay away from using them they are cheap because they are crap!

Hastings Direct cancelled my car insurance policy (for which I am most appreciative) because of "issues with my data," which I was expected to "resolve." These issues were not specified. In fact, the company's communication was no less rude than unhelpful.

Payed direct debit first year car insurance---cancelled 2nd year direct debit--but hasting insist i keep direct debit in place -
"2nd year quate payed annully one off total-
But they say i broke agreement direct debit mandate--even if no money will be taken--scam AVOID

Renewal price came through on the 27/04 due on the 26/05 for £1,681.87. Due to the below they increased my renewal to £3.131.98 and only refunded £443.80 of the £1,450.11 has been refunded to date.
On the 02/05 an unexpected claim was made against me even though this claim was in Surrey... I'm in Norfolk!
Clear and sufficient tracking evidence and CCTV evidence was sent to Hastings to prove that this trip had not been made by ourselves.
Hastings would not accept any of these as clear proof (for whatever unknown reason). We also had a third party inspect the vehicle for damage to which zero evidence of any damage was found.
Multiple emails and calls have been with Hastings however their service has been abysmal.
On the 08/06 they confirmed that the claim had been cancelled however they have only issued a partial refund of the difference.
Is it too much of a convenience that this claim was made near to when the renewal came through... Who knows, however Hastings should not be touched as when things go wrong it will be you left out of pocket.

When renewal time come they will send you a new quote that is several hundred pounds than the year before. So obviously you will go for a better deal from elsewhere. They you get an email saying that they will take your money and renew you automatically. The only way to stop this is to phone them up which is a massive waste of time.

Took ages on hold. Fortunately, you can spend this time writing scathing reviews to make you feel a little better.

I was going to give a 5-star review for the past years' experience, but I am so disappointed that after I had renewed my car insurance with another provided saving over £60, Hastings auto-renewed my policy which I requested to cancel in less than 12 hours of renewal.
The adviser I spoke to -"Zandy" tried her best to convince me to stay with Hansting offer a £40 discount and as I didn't want the hassle of cancelling the policy with the new provider I declined the offer.
I said I will give them a chance next year if they can match the renewal price.
Then came the master stroke. £20 for the arrangement fee for the policy. I had NOT opted for auto-renew and my car insurance was already renewed with another provider 5 days before so how did Hastings renew the policy?
I will NOT go back to Hastings and will advice friends, family and network to keep away from hem too.

Tried to add a temporary driver for 1 day to our policy and was told that hastings would not do this. Upon asking for a reason i was told by the agent that they would not tell her. For lack of transparency on something so simple i am concerned if actually have to make a claim.

Complaints procedure told me that this was because it was an australian licence. I have personally added temp drivers to a policy before and numerous people iasked the same. All with international licences.

Not very impressed with the complaints experience even though never expected anything other than the reason. Obfuscation and the email received from her glosses over the issue. She gets a 1*

Awful company
Customer care 0, never phone back when promised spent 9 hours on phone trying to get answers to the motor accident my daughter was involved in,made a complaint Total waste of time, got financial ombudsman service involved, Hastings complaint team are talking with the financial ombudsman and even tell them lies about making contact with me.

The company is appalling I don't believe a word they say,totally dishonest and I wouldn't trust them,the policy isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Will never use this pathetic company again